21 Feb 2015
Wag The Dog Re-make
The David Icke Videocast: Wag The Dog Re-make Called 'War Against ISIS' and 'Russia Is A Threat To The World'
17 Jan 2015
EU response to free speech killings? More internet censorship
In the wake of this week’s terrorist attacks in Paris, which began with the killing of 12 people at the offices of satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, the interior ministers of 12 EU countries have called for a limited increase in internet censorship.
The interior ministers of France, Germany, Latvia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the U.K. said in a statement (PDF) that, while the internet must remain “in scrupulous observance of fundamental freedoms, a forum for free expression, in full respect of the law,” ISPs need to help “create the conditions of a swift reporting of material that aims to incite hatred and terror and the condition of its removing, where appropriate/possible.”
This sounds similar to recent agreements in the U.K. whereby ISPs use filters to stop citizens seeing “extremist” online content, though it’s hard to tell without more details. There seems to be no coordinated push for more internet surveillance just yet, although there is a drive for better intelligence sharing between EU countries.
It seems, to say the least, an awkward reaction to what was in part a free-speech-related attack — the left-wing Charlie Hebdo has itself frequently been accused of hate speech for its portrayal of Muslims and others. On that front, a German newspaper that reprinted blasphemous Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Mohammed in the wake of the attack was firebombed in the early hours of Sunday morning, with no injuries. Others that did the same remain under police guard.
30 Mar 2014
UK Faith Minister Dismisses Richard Dawkins As A 'Secular Fundamentalist'
Baroness Warsi has denounced atheist academic Richard Dawkins as a "secular fundamentalist", as she spoke about tackling Islamophobia.
During a wide-ranging interview with the Huffington Post UK, the minister for faith and communities, who is a Muslim, said the "most aggressive post I get is from people who are secular fundamentalists".
The Tory peer told HuffPost UK: "For me, what I define as a secular fundamentalist is somebody who says that there should be no public space for faith." When it was pointed out to her that this is what 'God Delusion' author Richard Dawkins and his fellow 'new atheists' call for, she replied: "That's why they’re so fundamentalist in their [secular] beliefs."
This isn't the first time Warsi and Dawkins have clashed. In an article for the Daily Telegraph in February 2012, Warsi claimed the UK was under threat from a growing wave of "militant secularisation". Dawkins responded by accusing her of wanting to "push religion" in the public sphere.
27 Jun 2012
The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate
Interview with Max Blumenthal on The Real News:
Nina Rosenwald, (she's the heir to the Sears-Roebuck fortune) has spent about $2.8 million specifically on funding anti-Muslim figures and groups in the last ten years. But this money has gone a long way. And this is similar to a piece I did about another millionaire, named Aubrey Chernick, who spent around the same amount of money funding many of the same figures. And through this coordinated campaign of funding, they have been able to drive the Islamophobia industry and put the anti-Muslim agenda on the front of the American political radar.
Geert Wilders (the far-right Dutch political leader), who is—until recently, really held the key to the Dutch governing coalition, until he pulled out in protest of austerity measures being imposed on the Netherlands by the European Union, which made him sort of populist hero, and who is really the leading Islamophobia in the world—I mean, this is a guy who went on trial for hate speech in his own country for calling Muhammad a pedophile, for calling for burning the—for calling for banning—an unofficial ban on the Quran—was brought to New York City not once but twice by Nina Rosenwald, through her think tank Hudson NYC, which grew out of the Hudson Institute, a major neoconservative think tank which is no longer affiliated with it. And she hosted a fundraiser. According to her website, it cost $10,000 per person to get in. I don't know if this money went to Geert Wilders' legal fees, for his battle against hate speech, if it went into his campaign chest or what, but this is really remarkable. And she's apparently hosting these fundraisers at her apartment in New York City.
She's a major socialite. She's very close to Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative godfather who is the publisher of Commentary magazine. And she's also close to people like former NSA chief Michael Hayden, who sits on the board of MEMRI with her, a think tank, another anti-Muslim think tank. She's close to a whole host of national security figures.
22 Mar 2012
France ‘poisoned by divisions’, says presidential hopeful
At least one candidate in the forthcoming presidential election has refused to halt his campaign in the wake of the killing of four people outside a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday, hinting that creeping xenophobia in France may have been responsible.
Francois Bayrou, of the centrist MoDem party, on Monday said that anti-foreigner sentiment had crept into the election debate and that certain parties “were pointing the finger at people because of their origins and fanning passions in order to gain political capital.”
Police have linked the gun used at the school to the killings of three French soldiers of North African origin in Toulouse and nearby Montauban the previous week, raising speculation that the murders were committed by the same person and that they were racially motivated.
A 24-year-old gunman, still holed up in his besieged Toulouse apartment, has admitted killing seven people in a recent spate of attacks in southwest France, according to Paris's top prosecutor. Follow events as they unfold on France24 live blog.
17 Jan 2012
Can't Someone Tell Geert Wilders to Stop His Anti-Muslim Diatribes Before Somebody Gets Hurt?
A couple of years ago, a billboard appeared outside Columbia, S.C., looming above Interstate 26. Beady eyes stared out from a black balaclava emblazoned with an inscription from the Quran—clearly the eyes were meant to be those of a terrorist—and next to them were these words: “ISLAM RISING ... BE WARNED.”
Erected by the Virginia-based Christian Action Network, the sign advertised the group’s documentary about a charismatic Dutch politician with dyed-blond hair, a mysterious past, and a platform of paranoid hate. South Carolina seemed to offer a ready audience for Geert Wilders’s dire warnings against the Muslim religion. Today, with the Republican road show encamped in the state for the Jan. 21 presidential primary, the 48-year-old Dutchman is more than ever a man who needs to be watched and listened to carefully. At home in the Netherlands, his explosive theme of unrelenting hostility to Islam has built his xenophobic Party for Freedom, founded in 2005, into the country’s third-largest political party; across the Atlantic his message packs serious resonance in an American heartland still shaken by the 9/11 attacks. Wilders’s name and message have been invoked repeatedly in South Carolina and at least a dozen other state legislatures as they debate measures to ban an imagined threat: Islamic law.
That was then. These days the country’s ruling coalition stands or falls at Wilders’s discretion. And his antipathy toward Islam goes so far that when Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands wore a headscarf during a royal visit to the Gulf monarchies last week, Wilders complained that the Dutch government should have stopped her. “He has to move to the middle,” urges Hirsi Ali. “He has to distinguish between violent Islamists and nonviolent Muslims. You know, there are so many shades of Muslims right now, and he could use some of them as his allies.” But it’s as if the rhetoric has taken control of the speaker. “He has always loved attention and power,” says his largely estranged brother, Paul Wilders. “He has ruled out any sense of doubt.”
Like many politicians who boast of their own candor, Wilders keeps much of his life and work in the shadows. Apart from the boilerplate official biography that says he was raised a Roman Catholic in the town of Venlo, there’s little on the record from him about his family background, and he flatly refuses to talk about it now. According to his brother, some of the family’s roots extend deep into Indonesia, an outpost of the Dutch colonialist empire for nearly three and a half centuries. Long-ago intermarriage between European settlers and native “inlanders” might possibly account for the slightly almond shape of Wilders’s dull-blue eyes.
11 Jan 2012
Gitmo 10 years on: So much for closure
The US's Guantanamo Bay is marking its 10th anniversary, despite Obama’s repeated promises to close the infamous prison. The president even signed a new law authorizing the indefinite detention of terror suspects. Human-rights groups are organizing events to mark the occasion and respond to the broken promises. Obama has been criticized for not having a plan on how to close the detention facility, or at least for what to do with terror suspects.
Many believe the prospect of closing Guantanamo Bay has now become much more difficult, thanks to the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act by Congress (NDAA), signed by President Obama on December 31. Within that bill lie provisions that allow for the military to jail indefinitely anyone it considers a terrorism suspect – without charge or trial. With that increased leniency, increased space to hold those prisoners will no doubt be needed.
Suspect Murat Kurnaz, one of seven hundred suspects who have passed through during 10 years, was captured in Pakistan in 2001 while working for an NGO that helped young people quit drugs. He was sent to Guantanamo and tortured – for five years – like many others allegedly being abused, never getting a trial.
“I got waterboarded after I had seen a couple things. A couple of people got killed in front of me. Some of them, they got just kicked on the head until he died and the other one he was hanging on chain until he died,” former Guantanamo Bay detainee Kurnaz says. He was forced to confess he was a member of Al-Qaeda, though he told them again and again he was not. “It was freezing cold. It was winter time and I had no clothes on, so I was hanging there for many days,” Kurnaz remembers. “When the interrogator came they pulled me back down and he asked me are you going to sign or not and every time I said no, he just made like this and pulled me back up.”
It is stories like this that draw fierce condemnation. (RT)
Gitmo Files: WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners
7 Jan 2012
Israeli Checkpoint Cruelty
"Animals. Animals. Like the Discovery Channel. All of Ramallah is a jungle. There are monkeys, dogs, gorillas. The problem is that the animals are locked they can't come out. We're humans. They're animals. They aren't humans we are." - Israeli border police (you can find at 5:03 of this video)
31 Dec 2011
Cucumbers Too Sexy for Women
An Islamic cleric living in Europe reportedly has warned Muslim women not to get too close to bananas, cucumbers or other produce -- to avoid having “sexual thoughts.”
The unnamed cleric, whose directive was featured in an article in el-Senousa, a religious publication, purportedly said that if women wanted to eat these foods, a third party -- preferably a male related to them, such as their father or husband -- should cut the items into small pieces before serving, the Egyptian website Bikya Masr reported.
Carrots and zucchini also were added to the alleged cleric's list of forbidden foods for women. News of the statement quickly spread online, leaving many liberal Muslims embarrassed and angry, evoking a flurry of mockery in online forums.
17 Dec 2011
Falsely humanized Muslims in America
Last week Lowe’s Home Improvement pulled its ads from the TLC show All-American Muslim in response to an organization claiming the show "falsely humanized Muslims in America.” The Lowe’s controversy has exposed more Islamophobia in America. This issue falls directly in line with what the My Fellow American project is trying to prevent and overcome in America.
This week, whether intentionally or not, Kayak.com followed the poor example set by Lowe's, when it, too, decided to pull future advertising from the TLC program "All-American Muslim." Of course advertisers have the right to decide where they run their ads, but it is disappointing to see a company feed into the fear mongering facing the American Muslim community.
No company can argue it is not taking a political stand when it yanks advertising from a TV program because of the religion of the people portrayed on the show and the unfortunate and unnecessary political controversies surrounding them. Kayak.com's decision to cease running ads on TLC during broadcasts of "All-American Muslim" is evidence not only that the travel website's leadership would rather sacrifice publicity and potential sales than risk being seen as supportive of a certain segment of the American population, but more importantly, that it sends a message that it may not respect the diversity of faiths that define and enrich our country, despite what Kayak officials might say to the contrary.
Huffington Post - My Fellow American
Rabbi Jack Bemporad and Sheik Yasir Qadhi On Lowe's and Islamophobia
12 Dec 2011
Jerusalem - Altar of Sacrifice
Heretic Productions present: Zen Gardner's "Jerusalem-Altar of Sacrifice" specially written piece in these troubled times.
7 Nov 2011
Israel Knesset to discuss 'homeland' bill
Israel's parliament (Knesset) is set to debate a bill that defines Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, which has been criticized by some of the lawmakers as “racist.”
If approved, the bill would identify Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, make Hebrew its official language and give Arabic a "special status." Currently, both Hebrew and Arabic are official languages in Israel.
2 Nov 2011
Netanyahu trying to persuade cabinet to support attack on Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favour of military action against Iran, a senior Israeli official has said. According to the official, there is a "small advantage" in the cabinet for the opponents of such an attack.
Netanyahu and Barak recently persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who previously objected to attacking Iran, to support such a move.
Haaretz Daily Newspaper - Iran vs Israel - Israel hikes missile range over Iran fears (UPI)
21 Oct 2011
Religious Nuts Clash In US City
One Muslim man prays, Christian evangelists try to distract him and say "praise Jesus Christ", another holds a Zionist flag. All on one street together?! What an odd sight!
10 Sept 2011
The Image War
A PR stunt which killed thousands and launched a propaganda war that has, so far, lasted a decade. Since 9/11, how far has the US and al-Qaeda been prepared to go to win 'hearts and minds' with elaborate media strategies?
15 Aug 2011
Immigration and Islam Raise Questions of Dutch Identity
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who admitted to mass killings last month, was obsessed with Islam and had high praise for the Netherlands, an important test case in the resurgence of the anti-immigrant right in northern Europe.
The sometimes violent European backlash against Islam and its challenge to national values can be said to have started here, in a country born from Europe’s religious wars. After a decade of growing public anger, an aggressively anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders, leads the third-largest party, which keeps the government in power.
In Slotervaart, a majority immigrant neighborhood in southwestern Amsterdam, Maria Kuhlman and her friends watched Muslim families stroll by on a Ramadan afternoon, some of the men in robes and beards, the women wearing headscarves. A large blond woman shouted, “Go Wilders!”
Mr. Wilders’ Freedom Party, which combines racist language with calls for more social spending, won 15.5 percent of the vote in June 2010. He was recently acquitted of charges of hate speech for comparing the Koran to “Mein Kampf” and calling mosques “palaces of hatred.” He wants all immigrants and their children deported and warns of the supposed Muslim plot to create “Eurabia.” He declined repeated interview requests.
25 Jul 2011
Hunt for Britons linked to Norway killer Anders Behring Breivik
Before he carried out Norway’s worst terrorist atrocity, Breivik typed out a chilling 1,500-page description of his plans, written entirely in English and datelined “London, 2011”. He signed the document “Andrew Berwick”, an Anglicised version of his name, and described his “mentor” as an Englishman he identified as Richard.
Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officers are now trying to establish whether Breivik visited London in recent years and whether he was part of a wider network preparing to carry out similar attacks. The 32 year-old boasted that he was just one of up to 80 “solo martyr cells”recruited throughout Western Europe who were ready to follow his example of trying to overthrow governments tolerant of Islam.
He said he regarded himself as a successor to the medieval Knights Templar, and claimed to have been recruited at a meeting in London in April 2002, which was hosted by two English extremists and attended by eight people in total.
Any member of a political group that has allowed Muslims to migrate to their country is regarded as a “target” who deserves “the death penalty”, according to his writings. He also spoke of being in touch with the far-Right English Defence League and made repeated references to British politicians, including Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, who were blamed for making London a global hub of Islamic terrorism.
27 Jun 2011
US Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann in israeli Arse-Licking Contest
US Republican Michele Bachmann, a favourite of Christian conservatives and Tea Party activists, has formally launched her presidential campaign.
15 Shocking Lines & Unforgettable Moments From Michele Bachmann
24 May 2011
Obamas declaration for Zionist Israel
In the years between 2000 and 2009, Israel killed over eleven times as many Palestinian children as the other way around. (comment on YouTube)